The role of the municipality in disaster management is a well-researched topic, but there is an ongoing debate concerning municipal capability in handling disasters. Many researchers have argued that governmental capability is a crucial factor in ensuring effective disaster management. Thus, several studies have measured or analyzed disaster-management capabilities at the local level. However, the relationships between the related indicators have not yet been ascertained. This study addressed this research gap by examining, with a special focus on non-structural aspects, how each indicator is related to governmental capability, as well as by examining other external indicators. We also made recommendations for developing, based on municipal characteristics, the capabilities of local governments. To do this, we employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze data obtained from surveys conducted in 106 municipalities in Indonesia. Our findings indicated the existence of complicated relationships between the factors that improve local governmental capabilities and the external factors that influence capabilities. We found that the “budget allocation” factor played a fundamental role in disaster management. This article thus recommends increasing “budget allocation” as a primary way to strengthen local governmental capabilities in this area.

According to the World Risk Report in 2018, Bangladesh has been identified as the most vulnerable country in the world. Among the 64 districts of this country, 19 districts are known as coastal districts 36.8 million people live in high-risk areas. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the reasons and factors why many residents do not comply with evacuation orders to cyclone shelters in an emergency period. Based on survey data collected from the survivors this paper finds that prior to the landfall of cyclone Komen in 2015 the majority of the respondents in Kutubdia Upazila had received cyclone warning either from Cyclone Preparedness Program volunteers or the radio, but only 61% of respondents in this village responded to the warning by seeking protection in the nearby shelter. The major identified reasons for 39% of respondent’s non-compliance with evacuation orders are the long distance of a cyclone shelter from home, an absence of the head of the family, gender-related concerns, not enough space in the shelter, the poor road network and no space for livestock in the shelter. It is also found that people did not start evacuation until observing the symptom of risk. To improve cyclone preparedness and response to evacuation orders from residents, an educational campaign by Government and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) is needed in coastal zones to improve the use of public cyclone shelters. Finally, to reduce risk Government should take the initiative for infrastructural development in the coastal areas of Bangladesh.

Tsunami hazards can be considered as multiregional in their impacts, as transoceanic waves can propagate beyond local areas, as evidenced in recent tsunami events, e.g., the 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Great East Japan tsunamis. However, in a single event, the characteristics of a tsunami (wave amplitude and arrival time) can differ from location to location, due to a myriad of reasons including distance from the source, bathymetry of the seafloor, and local effects. Tsunami countermeasures cannot be similarly applied globally. It is prudent to investigate tsunami hazard characteristics at a regional scale in order to evaluate suitable tsunami countermeasures. On this basis, approximately 300 major historical tsunamis have been reproduced in this study based on seismic records over the last 400 years. In this study, numerical analysis was performed to reproduce tsunami waveforms at each global tidal station, and numerical results were verified by comparing them with the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami record data. Non-structural tsunami countermeasures were proposed and selected for each region based on two main criteria – wave amplitudes and arrival times. Evaluation of selected countermeasures indicate that planning for evacuation processes (such as evacuation route mapping, signage and evacuation drills) are important in all situations. For local large tsunamis, evacuation drills are essential to ensure a community is well prepared for self-evacuation due to the short amount of time available for evacuation. Early warning systems were most effective where tsunamis are of large and distant origins. On the other hand, it would be more appropriate to invest in public alert systems for tsunamis of smaller magnitudes. Using these selection criteria, combinations of countermeasures were proposed for each region to focus their attention on, based on the simulated results of the historical tsunami events. The end-goal of this study is to inform decision-making processes and regional planning of tsunami disaster management.

The relationship between the Central and local governments during an emergency has been primarily discussed at the Diet, in connection with the Constitution’s amendment, including the emergency provisions. However, opinions from the various fields are divided and discussions are typically based on whether an emergency state should be tackled principally by the Central Government or municipalities. The increasing risk of a super wide-area disaster (huge disaster) that can be expressed as national emergency state, such as the Great Nankai Trough Earthquake and large-scale flood, makes it imperative for advancing the previously mentioned discussions. It should be examined whether a state of emergency state could be managed appropriately within the administrative framework of the municipalities based on the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act. In addition, necessary measures should be adopted within the purview of the existing laws apart from the discussions on the amendment of the Constitution. In this case, detailed discussions are needed on, for example, what kind of special rules should be established regarding the relationship between the Central and local governments. In this paper, the Great Nankai Trough Earthquake, large-scale flood in metropolitan areas, nuclear disaster, and complex disaster along with natural disaster are considered; the plans created by the Central Government in terms of the disaster prevention measures for such disasters are examined; and the items requiring special rules on the relationship between the Central and local governments are extracted from the disaster emergency measures. Furthermore, the per item application procedure of these special rules is also determined.

The downtown area in Yangon city, Myanmar, frequently experiences heavy traffic; one of the reasons is rampant illegal parking of cars on the streets. It has been pointed out in several studies that this area would be severely affected when a disaster occurs, and hence it is essential to clarify the effect of such undesirable parking behavior on the reduction in capacity of the Yangon road network. The purpose of this research is to illustrate the unfavorable traffic conditions that would result from on-street parking in downtown Yangon. We studied the mathematical relationship between travel distance and flow volume, and clarified the following mechanism. (i) On-street parking reduces the speed of vehicles on the streets. (ii) The unbalance of speed causes deviation of the shortest-time route from the shortest-distance route. (iii) An increase in total travel distance results in an increase in flow volume. We have also presented numerical results based on the detailed GIS data for downtown Yangon, and examined two scenarios that describe both evacuation and normal-life situations.

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 is a virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) raised it to the highest level of global alert. The English, Chinese, and Japanese language Twitter data related to this disease during the first period after the WHO started releasing the situation reports were collected and compared with the tweet trends. This study also used quantitative text analysis to extract and analyze the co-occurrence network of English tweets. The findings show that trends and public concerns in social media are related to the breaking news and global trends such as the confirmed cases, the reported death tolls, the quarantined cruise news, the informer, etc.